Review: 'What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets’ by Michael Sandel

Professor Michael Sandel is quite the philosophical superstar; his course on Justice at Harvard University – now available online and for free – has been viewed by millions. Compared with your average, sleep-inducing university lecture, Sandel’s course makes for compelling viewing. In 2009 he delivered the BBC’s Reith Lectures on ‘A New Citizenship’ to great acclaim. He is, without question, a brilliant communicator and a stirring intellectual.

In his latest book, ‘What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets’, Sandel takes a prod to our fetish for markets and the rising tide of commodification. Some things should just never be sold, he argues, because doing so degrades and corrupts goods that are best understood in non-market terms.

It’s necessary to get something out of the way to begin with, because I can hear the indignant cries of the rampant right-wingers already: “Communist! Communist!” This is not a tract against capitalism. Sandel doesn’t question – and really, the debate is just boring now – that markets are powerful and efficient (though, imperfect) tools for the allocation of resources and the organization of productive activity. Free markets are, as Churchill said of democracy, the worst system available – besides everything else. What this book laments, is “the expansion of markets, and of market values, into spheres of life where they don’t belong,” and the fact that, “without quite realizing it, without ever deciding to do so, we drifted from having a market economy to being a market society.”

There are two arrows to Sandel’s bow; the first is an objection about inequality, and the other is about corruption. To take them in turn: in a society where everything is for sale, life is harder for those of modest means – the more money can buy, the more it matters. Secondly, some things are improperly valued or degraded (corrupted) when commodified. I don’t agree with Sandel’s approach to why some things shouldn’t be sold, but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt for now and consider some examples. Here are some things you can now buy (at least in the United States):

-  A prison cell upgrade: $82 per night. In Santa Ana, California, and some other cities, nonviolent offenders can pay for nicer accommodation – a clean, quiet jail cell, away from the cells for non-paying prisoners.

-  The services of an Indian surrogate mother to carry a pregnancy: $6,250. Western couples seeking surrogates increasingly outsource the job to India, where the practice is legal and the price is less than one-third the going rate in the United States.

-  The right to shoot an endangered black rhino: $150,000. South Africa has begun letting ranchers sell hunters the right to kill a limited number of rhinos, to give the ranchers an incentive to raise and protect the endangered species.

Of course, some of these things are a little pricey. But no worries – you can always raise some extra funds by:

-  Renting out space on your forehead to display commercial advertising: $777. Air New Zealand hired   thirty people to shave their heads and wear temporary tattoos “Need a change? Head down to New Zealand.”

-  Stand in line overnight on Capitol Hill to hold a place for a lobbyist who wants to attend a congressional hearing: $15-20 per hour. The lobbyists pay line-standing companies, who hire homeless people and others to queue up.

-  If you are a second grader in an underachieving Dallas school, read a book: $2. To encourage reading, the schools pay kids for each book they read.

Sandel’s book is great value for its panoply of jaw-dropping and often hilarious examples alone. The ones I’ve outlined here are by no means the most unusual (for the truly tragic, wacky and outrageous, you’ll have to get yourself a copy of the book).

Take the phenomenon of hired line-standers. What should we make of this practice? My guess is that most people would think that paid line standing, at least on Capitol Hill, is objectionable. But why? One reason is that Congress is a democratic institution, and when well-heeled lobbyists buy their way into hearings, it undermines the public nature of the forum. If allowing this practice would make congressional hearings the exclusive purview of the rich, I think we’d have a pretty good reason not to allow it.

In his book the ‘The Gift Relationship’, the British sociologist Richard Titmuss showed that paying people decreased both the quantity and quality of blood that a blood bank would receive (unless a very large amount of money was at play). The payment converted what had been a donation into a transaction, and eroded the moral aura that had been associated with the act. A market culture, just as here, changes how we view a whole multitude of goods, and not always for the better.

Sandel walks a fine line in this book between playing the moralist, and the conversation starting provocateur. It’s difficult to know which examples he supports and which he doesn’t. Let’s take another one from above: paying $150,000 to kill an endangered black rhino. No doubt there is an emotional knee-jerk, or ‘yuck’ reaction against this. It seems base, or uncouth, to kill such a beautiful creature if the only reason is that it’s for what might, generously, be described as ‘sport’. But it’s not clear why we shouldn’t allow it if it does in fact lead to less black rhinos dying overall. The empirical evidence Sandel discusses indicates that it has indeed had this effect; the new monetary incentive to preserve rhinos has been, apparently, enormously effective. If what we care about is outcomes, we should (assuming there are no viable alternatives) allow the hunters their bloody indulgence.

I’m not convinced by Sandel that we need to philosophize to figure out the ‘nature’ of goods. We can, and should, be less highfalutin and more consequential in our analysis. A decision not to allow something to be sold is best reached after concluding that doing so will have bad consequences, not because it is somehow inconsistent with it’s ‘nature’. Sandel is right to challenge the market fundamentalists, but I am concerned that he seeks to replace it with a fundamentalism of his own; namely that some things should just never be sold, no matter what.

It is in enunciating the various ways in which market culture has degraded and debased society (most particularly in the United States), and in its vigorous call for a more robust public debate, that the value of this book chiefly lies. Sandel is never less than highly entertaining, and even if you don’t agree with him, this book won’t fail to induce some seriously enjoyable cogitation.

Here is an interesting interview of Sandel on this book. And for those who haven’t heard of his course at Harvard on Justice, it is well worth taking a look.

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William Isdale is a law and arts (politics and philosophy) student at the University of Queensland, where he is an Academic Excellence Scholar and TJ Ryan Medallist and Scholar. He is the President of the Australian Legal Philosophy Students' Association and Editor of the Justice and the Law Society's journal 'Pandora's Box'. In early 2012 he was a visiting student at Oxford University's Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics.

The 'Sole director of the fate of human beings'?: Revisiting the idea of markets as 'default'

Markets are often described by economists in an almost messianic way- as if they alone will solve all of the world's problems. Now, it is worth noting that markets do a great many things well- they can be great democratisers (in the sense that they in principle allow for a levelling of the playing field), they are often better at distributing resources than a centralised economic instruments and they are more free of rent-seeking and political influence than command economies. However, something they certainly are not is natural- they are like anything else institutions, Douglass North's 'rules of the game' or 'humanly devised constraints on action'.

Indeed, as Polanyi claimed what has really happened is a Market Society (for anyone interested in a more in-depth look at this idea I recommend Polanyi's The Great Transformation) has been created: a combination of market exchanges, industrial production and hedonistic consumption. In this blog post, I will briefly chart how this is different from the mainstream economic account of what market mechanisms are, before briefly posing some conclusions on how this might affect modern development policy (looking particularly at the experience of Russia in the early 90s). The key difference I posit is that along Polanyi's lines, markets are embedded in the social and cultural relations of a society, rather than existing as a separate mechanism alongside them as neoclassical economics assumes (actually neoclassical economists mostly just seem very disquieted whenever the word 'culture' is mentioned).

'The Invisible Hand': Modern Market Exchanges

Markets used to be largely places where often subsistence-based farmers, tradespeople or originally small-scale settlers or tribes would get items they needed but didn't have or couldn't produce from other people. They were often ad hoc, sometimes based on barter and very much not interconnected- prohibitions both religious and social against profit-making ('usury') were followed to various degrees. Modern capitalism changed all this. Modern market exchange is predicated on the idea that commodities have value because of the relationship between things, especially in terms of the translation into a monetary value. Trade is predicated on the substitutability of unlike goods and each participant having a different scale of values in order to produce mutually beneficial trades. Markets have to be embedded and naturalised within society, that is markets must have “institutedness”. As Polanyi observes, ‘free markets’ are instituted processes that must be articulated through social, legal and political strategies. 

This system of exchange is predicated on social acceptance, which is why Western development projects often include help setting up market economies, as a ‘charitable’ venture. Therefore, when confidence is lost in markets they cease to function and as a test of this hypothesis, the exchange system should also fail. This occurred amongst the Nentsy people of Northern Siberia when the bank accounts the Soviets had given them became valueless due to the depreciation in the value of the ruble in the early 1990s. As predicted, the herders switched from buying consumer goods off the Russians back to solely reindeer herding. 

Markets did not become successful because barter inherently transformed into modern capitalism- indeed as Polanyi notes, the really curious thing about laissez-faire capitalism is how planned it was- it needed helping although through establishing private property rights, creating and then dismantling large monopolies (like the East India Trading Company) and a change in attitudes to wealth accumulation, which brings us to consumption. 

'J'adore, Dior': Consumption Patterns and the Modern Corporation

Value in cultural terms is defined by how people expect the world and people in it to behave and how they judge that behaviour. The value of wealth accumulation has changed from the medieval view of public virtue arising from private virtue to the formal economists’ idea that public virtue can arise from private vice. Associated with this has been a popularisation of modern hedonism, characterized by the creation of cultural value in the self-conscious seeking of personal pleasure. These concepts have spread widely to the point where self-interest is taken for granted in most of modern Western society and through global media, much of the world. Consumer goods are in Western society associated with 'commodity aesthetics' in which people ascribe value solely on the basis of design or promotion. Companies have sought to create a 'hyperreality' (Baudrillard) or an aesthetic coating of the world that seeks to use images to generate a market-based society. Companies have also successfully in many cases proselytised to the developing world, for example a Power Rice Ad that was run in Papua New Guinea that was synchronised to the soundtrack recording of “Power to the People!” and featured a muscular man lifting the rice at a construction site. Foster also charts the rise of beauty contests and other competitions that serve to reinforce that cultural capital is to be gained through individual choices (see Materialising the Nation: Commodities, Consumption and Media in Papua New Guinea by Robert Foster). This is also related to what Jonathan Friedman calls homo consumens, "whose fragmented identity is constantly rearranged by the winds of fashion". But how is this all made?

'Work must not Cease’: Mass-Production'

Production is driven by the demands of the market, with an emphasis on creating surplus to trade with others and where the value is determined by what others will exchange for them. Perhaps the defining feature of the capitalist mode is its tendency to reproduce itself on an increasing scale. Production is also changed from previous reciprocal or household modes of production, because who makes the product is now irrelevant- i.e. all goods can at least hypothetically have their value translated into a monetary one (this is quite different to say the Kubo system where who gave you the pig is more important than the pig's 'worth' to you). Capitalism also means that production is no longer autonomous- capitalist production is the most interlinked of any economic system. Finally, high fidelity is ensured by industrialised production technologies, which can produce millions of copies of the same good (this is a key difference from say craft-based economies).

Moving from the Positive to the Normative: Some Policy Ideas

All of the claims I have made so far are what economists call 'positive', that is I've tried as hard as possible to make factual claims about what is not what should be (by hedonism for example, I do not mean a Catholicesque value judgment, I just mean the pursuit of individual pleasure). Now I will try and draw some tentative policy conclusions from what I've written.

The first is that we should not expect markets in the third world to just spontaneously exist- governance needs to get better before the 3rd world can open up to trade more fully and before those countries can actually prosper. In particular, Chicago School style 'shock therapy' is an appalling idea because weak economies with markets that are barely embedded in society will just collapse- witness Russia in the early 1990s. There is a role in international NGOs and other aid providers to tie further aid to institutional improvements- also Western governments should help here rather than just prescribing more of the 'Washington Consensus'.

The second is that the continued survival of markets means that institutions in every country have to be kept strong- there is a role for government policy in other words to stop the collapse in social relations that Polanyi discusses (though I obviously disagree with Polanyi's solution, which is to transition to either socialism or economic democracy).

The last is that while international finance and other forms of globalisation are breaking down national boundaries, there will be a continued role for nation states in the future to regulate these issues and that they will require a truly international response.

I would also make the empirical observation that economics needs to study these issues more- it should not be left to sociologists and anthropologists to fix up huge gaps in modern economic theory.

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Dan Gibbons is a third year Bachelor of Commerce (Economics) student at the University of Melbourne. He has a forthcoming publication in Intergraph: A Journal of Dialogic Anthropology (about memory and nationalism) and is currently submitting papers on the rise of modern consumerism, the role of criminology theory in literary criticism and the institutional theory of nationalism. Dan is a keen debater and public speaker.

'An unjust law is no law at all': Homophobia and QLD's Defence of Provocation

In 2008, when Wayne Ruks made sexual advances towards two men outside a church in Gympie, he was unaware that his actions would invoke a response that would cost him his life. The defence that was successfully relied upon to reduce the charge from murder to manslaughter is known as the homosexual advance defence, which is a form of provocation.

In 2003, Tasmania abolished the defence of provocation for murder with Victoria doing the same in 2005. Although all other Australian jurisdictions still allow this defence, New South Wales and the Northern Territory have excluded non-violent sexual advances from this defence. The current law in Queensland is stated in section 304(1) of the Criminal Code Act 1899 (Qld):

“When a person who unlawfully kills another under circumstances which, but for the provisions of this section, would constitute murder, does the act which causes death in the heat of passion caused by sudden provocation, and before there is time for the person’s passion to cool, the person is guilty of manslaughter only.”

Critics of the defence argue that it was relevant prior to the defence of manslaughter being introduced so that those accused could escape the previous punishment of the death penalty. This being the case, the question raised is whether or not this defence serves a purpose in modern criminal law and whether it’s application in cases such as Green v R (1997) is extending the definition too far.

The Reasonable Person

The general test that has been applied throughout common law (R v Sabri Isa [1952]) is that of the reasonable person. More specifically, what was the effect of the provoking actions, not on the individual but rather on a reasonable and objective person? Gibbs J extended this in Moffa v R (1977) to say that the reasonable person is not one who acts reasonably, but rather one who has reasonable powers of self-control. Basically, would an objective third party believe that it was reasonable for the accused to act in that manner?

The opposition to this is that it is impossible to create a model of reasonableness when it comes to provocation, as one must be able to view the characteristics of the accused in order to truly understand why they acted in the way that they did. Although it is reasonable to suggest that the characteristics of the accused be taken into account, a major issue that arises is does this defence protect people who are inherently violent and easily provoked? When someone is easily provoked due to any number of characteristics, the chances of this defence being used are increased. Additionally, it is very difficult to prove and understand how each individual person reacts to different actions. This then has a negative impact on the victim because their killer is given a lesser sentence due to the fact that they reacted to words or actions differently to what a reasonable person generally would.

Although the reasonable person test may go against the rights of the accused, the objective test is the most suitable test to apply due to the fact that it is generally consistent with the views of wider society.

The Homosexual Advance Defence

The homosexual advance defence is a form of provocation in that following a sexual advance; the accused loses control and kills the person who made the advance. Although being used in a handful of New South Wales cases previously (R v McKinnon (1993) and R v Bonner (1995)) the full extent of the homosexual advance defence was seen when it was upheld by the High Court in a 3:2 split in Green v R (1997). In this case, a close friend made a gentle advance (rubbing the groin and backside) towards the accused and this then evoked memories of sexual abuse that occurred between his father and sisters. Because of this, the accused lost control and repeatedly punched the victim’s face and then proceeded to smash his head against a wall causing large cuts on the victim’s head. As if this wasn’t enough, the accused then grabbed a nearby pair of scissors and stabbed him upwards of ten times. During this attack the victim was never able to defend himself. This attack was in no way proportional to the actions of the victim. This mans homophobia caused him to kill one of his friends, and then because of the reasons behind the death, he was able to reduce his charge. The most famous line from this case is when the accused said “yeah I killed him, but he did worse to me” and upon being asked why he killed him the response was “because he tried to root me.” 

On the issue of the reasonable person, McHugh J commented that in this instance it should be viewed as a reasonable person who was subjected to a sexual advance by a close friend that was aggravated by the attackers sensitivity to sexual assaults. From the dissenting view, Gummow J argued that as the acts of sexual abuse we towards his sisters rather than himself, the actions were insufficiently related to the actions of the deceased that caused the provocation. This then raises again the question of whether or not the characteristics of the accused should be taken into account. On this, the other dissenter, Kirby J argued that as a society, Australia is not that homophobic that the response to a non-violent advance would be to brutally murder the victim. Although there are members of society who are genuinely that homophobic, as a whole, most Australians would not see this as a proportionate response.

More recently, in 2008 two men outside a church in Gympie beat a man to death. As the man had made sexual advances towards them, they successfully used the homosexual advance defence. Following the attack outside his church, Father Paul Kelly began a petition to eliminate the gay panic defence from Queensland law. This petition as garnered much support much support including that of British comedian Stephen Fry. The growing public support against the defence shows as a society, views towards homosexuals have improved dramatically and the reasonable person test would not extend to this form of provocation.

Those who oppose the homosexual advance defence claim that it is only used to protect homophobes and there could not be a reasonable justification for allowing it. The defence of provocation is also available for charges of assault, and although the same issues apply, it is more reasonable to see how someone could lose control to the extent of assault. Because even though they have lost control, they still have the self-control to know when to stop, however this is still bad. When the homosexual advance defence is used, it has been in cases of non-violent sexual advances; it has not been in cases where the actions of the victim have been enough to incite a violent response. 

This then raises the question of, is it possible for someone to be so overcome with panic upon being ‘hit on’ that they lose control to the extent that the result of their actions is death? Although there are still many instances of homosexuals being attacked, it is mostly done out of pure homophobia as opposed to responding to sexual advances. It is difficult to say whether or not it is impossible for this level of panic to occur; however even if it is possible for an accused to legitimately lose control and beat someone to death because of homosexual advances, this is not something that society accepts as reasonable or acceptable behaviour. 

It was raised in the dissenting judgement of Green v R that the defence should be abolished “because it reinforces the notion that fear, revulsion or hostility are valid reactions to homosexual conduct.” When allowing a defence like this to exist, it sends the message that this type of reaction is acceptable and this is a contradiction of the views that are held by our modern society.

Kirby J raised one of the biggest arguments surrounding this defence in his dissenting judgement. It was put forward that this defence seems to only apply to homosexual advances as opposed to advances by heterosexuals. He argued that if a woman who had non-violent sexual advances made against her, tried to use provocation as a defence for murder, it would extend the definition of provocation would be unreasonably extended. If it is unreasonable to extend the definition of provocation to non-violent heterosexual advances then why do we continue to allow this defence to be used for homosexual advances? The fact of the matter is that provocation should extend to neither as it is extremely unreasonable that someone should be able to claim that they lost control of their actions when the supposed provoking actions were non-violent sexual advances.

What are the alternatives?

Although there are major problems with the provocation defence, some say that there are certain crimes where the defence should be allowed; such as domestic violence where the accused is reacting to violent situations. In response to this I still recommend that the defence of provocation for murder be removed however in addition to this, I suggest the, what some would call controversial, step be taken and the mandatory life sentence be removed from the charge of murder and allow for the judge to use his or her discretion when it comes to sentencing. In doing so it allows for judges to take into account mitigating factors but without reducing the sentence of murder to manslaughter. It is completely reasonable to charge this people with murder because even if they have ‘lost control’, when one viciously attacks a person to the point of death it is difficult to argue that they lacked the required intent to cause death or grievous bodily harm.

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Andrew Suffern is a 2nd year Law/Justice student at Queensland University of Technology. He previously took a year of Film, of which he retains a keen interest. He is particularly interested in questions of legal ethics, especially surrounding the death penalty debate in the US. He is a keen debater.

Deep green hypocrisy — can we ever be ‘green’?

More and more we see the masses crying out for the protection of the environment — whether unkempt Marxists or wealthy philanthropists, they all exclaim: ‘please, won’t somebody think of the Childers flying fox?’ I jest, of course.  But aside from ruthless stereotyping, there are some important questions as to whether or not we can truly care about the environment in the extreme sense of ‘deep ecology’, where humans should seek ‘consistency within ecosystems’, not the manipulation of nature for their own ends.  In attacking this deep ecology framework, I don’t seek to argue against caring for the environment, since humans obviously benefit from its preservation, whether through beauty, resources or for future generations, but merely to undermine the philosophical basis of deep ecology, and explain how it is impossible to be truly green.  

The quest to protect the environment for the benefits it affords humanity broadly fits within the frame of what is labelled ‘shallow’ environmentalism, whose critics, the ‘deep’ ecologists, claim by continuing to accept anthropocentrism, the shallow ecologists simply perpetuate the exploitation of nature.  At the core of deep ecology or ‘deep green thinking’ is, most simply, the rejection of any sense of anthropocentrism and instead an acceptance of humanity as a part of nature, and not above it or separate.  

Deep ecology

The conclusion deep ecology reaches is that we must protect and preserve nature: we must be green, as we are merely part of the natural world, not above it.  This of course begs the question, what do we seek to preserve? What is it to be ‘green’?  The very word itself seems loaded with meaning, aside from its political connotations; it suggests that what humans should seek to preserve is those beautiful parts of wilderness: the old growth forests of Tasmania, the crystalline fjords of northern Europe and the pristine ice sheets of the poles.  Or is it the radioactive green of low-carbon nuclear energy?  So let us test this idea of natural preservation as an end in itself.  

While various frameworks are adopted by different groups, the focus is generally in fairly amorphous constructions, such as the ‘encouragement of nature to flourish’, which though evoking beautiful tableaux of flora and fauna in readers’ minds actually mean very little in terms of real goals.  In what seems like a more specific description, some proponents support preventing acts ‘inconsistent’ with particular ecosystems.  This remains unclear — what makes something inconsistent with nature?  It could be inconsistent with its appearance, such as a bitumen car-park in a rainforest, or even a wind turbine in a field.  However let us assume that it is not motivated purely by aesthetic considerations, given that many things in ‘nature’ (always said as if humans are not part of it, seemingly contradicting the anti-anthropocentric approach) can look out of place, and given the deep ecologists’ apparent loathing for ‘shallowness’.  

Inconsistent with nature?

To decide how to protect nature we must reach one of three conclusions, as I will explain, namely:

I.         Assume we can make choices regarding what is best for nature and then act along those lines, as deep ecologists suggest;

II.         Accept that, given the integrity of nature which must be preserved, we should remove humans from the planet; or

III.         Accept that the only consistent part of nature is its process of natural selection, and thus we should act with what is best in the eyes of humans, noting that this does not necessarily exclude the protection of nature as we decide.  

I. ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ — can humanity make choices about what is best for nature?

If we accept the idea of humanity as one with and not above nor divisible from nature, we cannot therefore make decisions regarding how to protect nature as an end in itself.  To make these decisions, in what I have already explained seems a value-laden process, it assumes some level of anthropocentrism, accepting that humans are in a position to make normative judgements to interfere with nature, even if the aim is its benefit.  Take climate change, for instance.  Why is nature better served by emitting less carbon dioxide and having a cooler planet?  Obviously there are human protection and lifestyle imperatives, such as rising sea levels and agricultural issues, but these are not our focus.  How is nature any less flourishing, or less consistent?  It could be the extinctions which cause the worry, however these are not inconsistent with the changes in nature which have occurred in the past.  What is the difference between extinction of a prehistoric frog as a result of natural flying predators and the extinction of a bird due to anthropogenic climate change?  The argument that such changes are differentiable seems strangely to put humans in the centre, as with anthropocentrism, or at least assign some sort of anthropo-polarity, with humans at one pole of some spectrum of nature, still distinct.  This seems contradictory to deep ecology’s stated basis.  

II. Should we kill the environmentalists?

There are some groups which propose gradual extinction or reduction of the human population, however this author dismisses the former leaving it to others to consider, and feels the latter is a discussion for another time.  Not only does it seem absurd to countenance, but is contrary to allowing nature to flourish, if, as deep ecologists say, humans are part of nature.  Again, our meta-reasoning ability as a race distinguishes us, and to use that very distinction to reason that we and nature are indistinguishable seems odd.  

III. ‘...until soft peaks form’ — is there only one way to measure consistency?

In adopting a model by which to measure consistency for the purposes of deep ecology’s aims, this author can only find one possible measure: the process of natural selection and Darwinism.  All of nature, including, as the deep ecologists wish, humanity, has developed through the process of natural selection: the random mutation of genes which then, through the ‘survival of the fittest’ leads to the prominence of optimal genetic features.  This evolution occurred and still occurs not only through survival of the fittest individual, but often the fittest groups, with much current research, for instance, about the evolutionary origins of altruism.  Whether we look at bonobos working (and sleeping) together for the benefit of the community or fish clinging to aquatic mammals in symbiotic relationships, we see that cooperation such as that of humans is not against this principle of natural selection.  So it seems that only if we interfere with that principle then we interfere with nature.  Can we ever interfere with this?  I contend that we cannot, which finally places humans as truly part of nature, equal with the other animals in our inability to modify the process.  Moreover, the conservationist tendencies of deep ecologists betray their true failures: by seeking the protection of nature as it exists now, they act antithetically to nature’s consistent, gradual development, and implicitly oppose the flourishing they wish it to undergo. 

The path ahead

So does this mean we should just go about the destruction of nature, emitting carbon dioxide as we please and hunting rhinos for their alleged aphrodisiacal properties?  Only if that is what we think is best for humans.  I certainly do not want to live in a barren, salinated wasteland at higher temperatures without exotic creatures, and neither do many, so even if we reject deep ecology we need not fear for that.  

It seems that for all its grand ambition, deep ecology fails to maintain the consistency it so prizes through its untenable basis.  Shallowness knows no bounds. 

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James Rigby is a first year student completing a Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Economics at the University of Queensland.  He has interests in politics and science, and intends to enjoy the best parts of Arts vicariously through his learned colleagues.  

The Sun is but a Morning Star: On the Importance of Science Literacy

The Neil deGrasse Tyson Meme

“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”

Carl Sagan

“Science literacy is a vaccine against charlatans who would try to exploit your ignorance”

Neil deGrasse Tyson

“Is no one inspired by our present picture of the universe? This value of science remains unsung by singers; you are reduced to hearing not a song or poem, but an evening lecture about it. This is not yet a scientific age”

Richard Feynman

“The world is a thing of utter inordinate complexity and richness and strangeness that is absolutely awesome. I mean the idea that such complexity can arise not only out of such simplicity, but probably absolutely out of nothing, is the most fabulous extraordinary idea. And once you get some kind of inkling of how that might have happened, it's just wonderful. And the opportunity to spend 70 or 80 years of your life in such a universe is time well spent as far as I am concerned.”

Douglas Adams 

Being scientifically literate enables you to comprehend the universe.

The Enlightenment and the scientific revolution bequeathed a certain and profound concept that has enabled us to fully grapple with and comprehend reality. From Galileo Galilei to David Hume and from to Charles Darwin to Steven Hawking, empiricism, scepticism and the scientific method  has been at the fore of the human endeavour to understand the world. And yet, whilst we pride ourselves on our technological civilisation that does not subject itself to the supposed irrational superstition of backward tribal cultures, pseudoscience and an apathy and ignorance of science is rife. Shamefully, as Carl Sagan pondered, the majority of newspapers have astrology sections, but how many of them even have weekly science columns? Indeed the majority of people can name many of the astrological star signs, but simply cannot list the planets of our solar system. Important public issues around science are being distorted and hijacked by fringe groups and science curricula around the world is being dumbed down or even rejected in place of pseudoscience or politicised and selective data.

Fundamentally, normatively and empirically, science literacy is an imperative for a citizenry in this modern age of information technology and climate change. It is important to note that science literacy doesn't translate into the ability to understand the basics of quantum electrodynamics or the ability to perform advanced calculus. Importantly, to be scientifically literate is to possess a certain frame of mind  and recognition of the world in a certain way. Moreover to value science literacy is not to degrade or criticise the liberal arts and humanities, they are equally of importance – as Jacob Bronowski states “It has been one of the most destructive modern prejudices that art and science are different and somehow incompatible interests”. Thus it should be of equal shame and hypocrisy for a liberal arts graduate to be oblivious to who Watson and Crick were just as it is for a theoretical physics graduate to be ignorant about Shakespeare or Chaucer. Scientific literacy empowers individuals to comprehend the world and make more rational decisions about their place in it. Moreover, science is similar to the arts and music – it is possible and indeed important to atheistically appreciate the discoveries of science. Indeed the scientific understanding of reality is one of beauty too – as Richard Feynman states “there are all kinds of interesting questions that come from the knowledge of science, which only adds to the excitement and mystery and awe and beauty”. There exists a gulf between the science cognoscenti and the public – when, for example, was the last time a scientist appeared on Q&A along with the politicians as opposed to a writer, actor or musician? Importantly, where does the fault lie – with the scientists themselves not being willing to engage with mainstream media, with the mainstream media not willing to engage with the scientists, or with society in not valuing science leading to the scientists and the media not bothering to engage society? Evidently it is a combination of all three demographics to blame.

The Current State of Science Literacy

Suffice to say, be it with evolution or climate change, the population of the United States is one of the most scientifically illiterate of the developed nations. The 2010 Science and Engineering Indicators by the National Science Foundation paint a very poor picture for the United States in terms of public science literacy. Indeed there exists a massive disconnect from the scientific community and the general public due to a number of social, cultural and political factors. Fortunately, Australia is far more scientifically literate than the United States, but only marginally. When it comes to nuclear energy or genetically modified food, scientific findings are just as likely to be politicised in Australia as the United States. A 2010 report of science literacy in Australia by the Australian Academy of Sciences shows that public science literacy is at a low. The report consisted of asking over 1500 individuals from a diversity of backgrounds six basic questions, such as “How long does it take for the Earth to go around the Sun?” and “Is the following statement true or false? The earliest humans lived at the same time as dinosaurs.” Only about 30 per cent of the sample answered all six questions correctly. And yet individuals were asked “In your opinion, how important is science education to the Australian economy?” and 42 per cent answered “absolutely essential” and 38 per cent answered “very important”. Thus the Australian public understands the importance of science education, but this understanding is not being translating into science literacy. The Health of Australian Science Report by the Office of the Chief Scientist of Australia this year has a largely positive account of science in Australia. Our researchers are punching well above their weight in terms of output and recognition and those that are enrolled in high school science are preforming well comparatively to other countries. However the report does point to some trends that will prove problematic in the long term. There have been declining rates of enrolment in high school science, especially in chemistry and physics, with the recent years being at an all-time low since 1980. Moreover, there have been declining rates of science teaching graduates. This is bad in terms of science literacy for the broader public.

The Ascent of Science Documentaries

The opening titles The Ascent of Man (BBC 1973), Connections (BBC 1978), 

Life on Earth (BBC 1979), and Cosmos (PBS 1980)

In 1969 David Attenborough was Controller of BBC Two and commissioned a thirteen part documentary series about the history of western art. Entitled Civilisation it was presented by Kenneth Clark and showcased not only the history and aesthetics of western art but also the quality of the new UHF colour television broadcasting the BBC was then offering. The series was met with universal acclaim and thus set the blueprint and precedence for landmark documentary series. Also in 1969, BBC commissioned the television documentary series Horizon which began airing regularly and each episode looked at individual topics in science. To complement the claims of Clark in Civilisation, that the arts reflected and was informed by the major driving forces in cultural evolution and with the popularity of Horizon, Attenborough specifically commissioned The Ascent of Man in 1973. Presented by Jacob Bronowski, the thirteen part documentary series looked at the development of human society through the development of science. Then in 1974, America’s Public Broadcasting Service was inspired and supported by Horizon to produce a regular science documentary series using its same model – thus culminating in Nova. In 1978 came, along similar lines to The Ascent of Man, Connections, a ten part documentary series by James Burke. It took an interdisciplinary approach to the history of science and demonstrated how various scientific discoveries and historical events were interconnected paving the way for modern technology. Inevitably and evidently Attenborough, who was always interested in natural history, was inspired to present his own documentary series. His passion culminated in the thirteen part series in 1979 entitled Life on Earth. In 1980 across the Atlantic Ocean, PBS commissioned the landmark Cosmos. Presented by Carl Sagan, Cosmos proved to be was a fundamental turning point for science education and the public understanding of science. To this day science documentaries have proliferated from Bill Nye the Science Guy to ABC’s Catalyst and even Mythbusters is an example of the popularity of science. Both BBC’s Horizon and PBS’s Nova are still running, David Attenborough is still producing and narrating natural history documentaries and clips of Cosmos have received millions of views on YouTube. Brian Cox’s Wonders of the Solar System and Wonders of the Universe have proved popular during mainstream television hours, and new documentary science communicators have taken the stage such as Alice Roberts and Michio Kaku. Suffice to say there is a market for science documentaries.

Popular Science in Popular Culture

Neil deGrasse Tyson with the cast of The Big Bang Theory

Popular science and science documentaries have become prominent in society. From online blogs, magazines, television series and books, popular science has are exponentially increased since the 1980s. Interestingly the rise of the public intellectual and science communicator, namely Carl Sagan, was originally decried by the scientific academy as dumbing down scientific research. Now this has been embraced as a critical role of the scientific cohort. Organisations such as the Royal Society, the British Science Association and the Royal Institution all value and realise the necessity of engagement with popular discourses. Many research scientists have turned their hand from laboratory work to writing popular science books, ranging from theoretical cosmology to evolutionary game theory. Steven Hawking set the precedence for this trend with his landmark and bestselling A Short History of Time in 1988 and to this day, with A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson in 2005, tautologically popular science books prove popular. Even The Big Bang Theory, CSI and Numbers are examples of the growing significance of science in popular culture.  It is perhaps a positive indicator that a group of scientists and nerds can be stars on popular prime time television shows in the United States. Scientists and science communicators have noticed the significance of this and Neil deGrasse Tyson even appeared as a guest on an episode of The Big Bang Theory. There are numerous YouTube channels and videos for science and increasingly universities, such as MIT and Harvard have been uploading videos of course lectures. Newspapers and radio stations have increasingly expanded their science sections, from Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science column in The Guardian to The Infinite Monkey Cage on BBC Radio 4.

Current Issues with Public Understanding and Awareness of Science

“It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known but to question it.” 

Jacob Bronowski

It is important to delineate the differences between the public understanding and awareness of science. Science outreach (university community engagement, public lectures), science communication (documentaries, museums, festivals, journalism, popular science books) and science education (primary and secondary science curriculum, university science courses) are avenues that fall under contributing to science literacy.

The Avenues of Science Communication

There exist a number of problems with the way science curricula are taught. For many people science is something to be tolerated in high school, details of which are promptly forgotten after tests are over. This may be understandable since regrettably basic science curriculum can often consist of lectures on taxonomy or analogous facts about what science has discovered, along with the painful need to memorize long lists of strange words. Rather than learning the cold hard facts, it is important for students to experience and understand the scientific method and to critically, experimentally and sceptically engage with data and reality. Recently, the National Science Education Standards agreed on by the the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Science Teachers Association, stresses teaching the paradigm of  scientific thinking rather than the learning of facts. It serves as a curricula foundation for primary and high school science which emphasises an inquiry-based approach in the context of concepts and principles rather than vocabulary and rote memorisation. 

When it comes to science communication, the University of Oxford was the first university to established a Professorship of the Public Understanding of Science through an endowment from the Hungarian-American computer executive Charles Simonyi in 1995. Richard Dawkins was the inaugural holder of this Professorship and he lectured, published and broadcast widely to improve the public understanding of science. That said, I am inclined to criticise Dawkins for quite explicitly pushing his agenda of atheism and focused less offering science to the public in an accessible, non-polemical manner. Whilst the relationship of science and religion is indeed a contentious one and whilst I personally believe the calculus of the justification of faith is as dead-end in the logical pathway from science and thus the two are irreconcilable, it is not the role of science communicators to push atheism or to critique personal religious beliefs.  Realistically, science and religious belief are commonly not mutually exclusive and it is quite alright to hold religious belief and value the scientific endeavour. But this is another discussion to be had. Dawkins’ successor, Professor Marcus du Sautoy, said he would be focusing “very much on the science and less on religion”.

Current practices and policies for science communication to the public are too top down. Whilst this may not be an issue for the classroom or university, but outside this educational context it becomes a massive problem. But more over it is not at all enough to recite the laws of thermodynamics or to know the boiling temperature of water. Indeed I. B. Cohen, a pioneering Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University from the 1950s, called this “the fallacy of miscellaneous information”. The average person does not take kindly to being lectured to by what they perceive to believe elitist and esoteric scientists in terms they don’t understand. Climate change science communication is a profound example of this. The Science Centre in Brisbane, and other similar institutions around the world, attempt to make science fun and visually stimulating without providing an avenue for critical thinking. Whilst these types of science communication have their place, they may be undermining the hard work and complexity of science. Science isn't a fun and visually stimulating endeavour for all scientists for all the time. To have children exposed to such perceptions is necessarily flawed. Outside of the high school laboratory it is important to incentivise the public to become scientifically literate – to make them stakeholders, to allow them to interact with the scientific method and to have their voices to be heard and to give them the chance to influence research priorities. Science is as much a part of society as the arts. As Jon Turney, a science communicator at University College London, states “should we work to promote scientific literacy so everyone is up to speed, empowered and ready to contribute to the great debates about science, technology and the future? No. Invite them to participate, and really mean it and they will find the motivation to become as scientifically literate as you, or rather they, please.”

Overall, whilst the popular science industry is growing, this hasn't necessarily translated into a great science literacy in the general public. There still exists structural and pedagogical problems in communicating science from the classroom by the teacher to lounge room by the documentary.

Economic Benefits of Science Literacy

A scientifically literate public are more than likely to push for prioritising scientific research, be it basic research or applied research. Indeed there are an immensity of economic benefits in having a scientifically literate public. In an information and industrial economy there is a growing demand for SMET (science, mathematics, engineering and technology) graduates likewise as the markets begin transitioning to a greener economy. Investments in sustainable energy, space exploration and nanotechnology all have immense long term benefits to the economy. The 2007 Public Support for Science and Innovation Report by the Productivity Commission lays out the economic basis for the public support of science. Economic arguments for the public support of science come from recognising that science has the elements of being a public good. First, it is non-rival in that it can be widely applied without the cost of providing it to marginal individuals being high. Second, it is partially excludable as when someone makes use of science they can only appropriate a fraction of its returns and actions can be taken that prevent excludability. The traditional argument for the public support of science was first developed after the Second World War by Vannevar Bush, who was Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, an independent federal agency. In Science: The Endless Frontier, a report to President Truman in 1945 on future science and technology policy, Bush outlines the distinction between basic research and applied research. He propounded that basic research was a critical input into the production of useful knowledge, being “the pacemaker of technological progress”. This is the one-dimensional linear model: science leads to innovation leads to productivity – the economic argument of spillovers. 

Public Policy

“By definition, I begin

Alternative medicine, I continue

Has either not been proved to work,

Or been proved not to work.

You know what they call alternative medicine

That's been proved to work?

Medicine” 

Tim Minchin

It is imperative for the public to be engaged with science especially when it comes to government making policy decisions about science. The existence of a democratic process, with voting rights and a transparent and representative governance structure, is fundamental but not sufficient. Individuals that are scientifically illiterate are increasingly at a disadvantage when they lack the information to engage in these important public policy dilemmas as a critical and independent thinker. For example, the many causes and effects that impact human health are questions of science: alternative medicine has no cause outside the placebo effect on treating disease; smoking is a cause of lung cancer; obesity is a cause of diabetes; lead poisoning is a cause of brain damage in the young; alcohol and drug use by pregnant women are a cause of brain damage to their unborn children. The public must also grapple with important public policy questions that must be informed by science. For example, an understanding of the science of embryonic stem cell research is critically important to inform policymakers who are advocating or opposing this research; an understanding of climatology is essential to those concerned with regulation of fossil fuel consumption and energy policy; astronomy and cosmology must inform wise investment in space exploration. Moreover, when it comes to the judicial system it is important to have a grasp of the scientific method. Legal principles when it comes to determining admissibility of scientific evidence, such as the Frye standard and the Daubert standard, are important is many cases. Once a population begins to start thinking critically and rationally about the world they are evidently less likely to support the  fringe or mainstream distortion of science by politicians and the media. A scientifically literate population would value and vote for evidence based public policy, especially when it comes to crime and public health.

Values, both Ethical and Aesthetic, from a Scientific Outlook

“It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

Carl Sagan

Science is beauty

Normatively and empirically, I believe the scientific method lends itself to humanism and progressive social policy. Science is an incredibly humbling endeavour which allows us to understand our position in the immensity of the cosmos.  The image of earth as a pale blue green dot, as Carl Sagan said,  “underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known”. Even Yuri Gagarin, the first human into space, stated  “Orbiting Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it!” During the Cold War many scientists joined the disarmament and peace movements. The Russell–Einstein Manifesto of 1955 at Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs is a profound example of this. All this is not to exclude or play down the horrific outcomes of science - from the nuclear bomb itself or to the eugenics of the Nazi regime. But it is important to note that these horrific outcomes are not due to the failings of science, but rather the politics and public policies around the science. I certainly reach many of my personal ethical values from a scientific knowledge of the way the world is. Knowing the Newtonian physics behind the rotation of the earth around the sun does not at all detract from the beauty I see in a sunset. It enhances it. I am humbled to know that that sun is but a morning star in the cosmic immensity. I was a member of the astronomy club at my high school and I still remember the feeling or gazing at the rings of Saturn or looking at the craters on the moon. A scientific outlook is a sublime one.

The rings of Saturn as taken by NASA’s Voyager 1

Conclusions 

It is indeed perhaps a truism that education is a good and ideal aim for everyone. This is important when it comes to science. The public tends to be either apathetic and ambivalent to science or fearful and troubled by science. It is important to recognise that there is a cognitive diversity in society – different people have different interests and cognitive capacities when it comes to arts and sciences. Indeed the demographics involved would be those that will never be engaged by science, those that are aware of it but do not care, those that are on the fence either way, those that appreciate science, and those that are fully engaged with science. As Susan Greenfield, former Director of the Royal Institution and Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Oxford, stated “Once we have a society where science is as exciting as football, and where attending a science lecture or debate is as relevant and fun as going to the cinema, only then will we be truly empowered as a society to harness science for what we want in life, rather than the other way round.” This indeed an ideal that may not conform to the basic cognitive psychologies of the average person, but is an ideal we should strive for nonetheless. To suggest the average person can’t appreciate the scientific method, just like they can’t appreciate classical literature is offensive. It is a failing of our education and our cultural norms that the average person goes to sleep when they hear Newtonian laws of motion or Shakespeare. Indeed it is imperative that we rectify this. Science literacy is as fundamental for a society as access to clean water, sustainable energy, and healthcare. Amazingly, all these requirements for a healthy society stem from scientific knowledge.

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Tasman Bain is a second year Bachelor of Arts (Anthropology) and Bachelor of Social Science (International Development) Student at the University of Queensland. He is interested evolutionary anthropology, public economics and philosophy of science and enjoys endurance running, reading Douglas Adams, and playing the glockenspiel.

'You've Got a Friend in Me, When the Road Looks Rough Ahead': On Patterns of Friendship

Introduction: 'I get by with a little help from my friends'

Humans are deeply unusual creatures- we are the only species to form 'long-standing, non-reproductive unions'- that is, we have friends! From C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien to Boswell and Samuel Johnson to Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway to even fictional friendships like that of Achilles and Patroclus- friendships are some of the most important relationships we have. Indeed, a decline in friendships in the United States (an American Sociological Review study found the number of people with at least one close confidant has dropped from 80% to 57% from 1985 to 2004) has been linked to an increase in psychological disorders. But why do we have friends at all? And perhaps more interestingly: who are we likely to be friends with?

I will trace evidence that cooperation is important in human societies and that this likely explains the psychological rewards of friendship. I will also explore new evidence that even in tribal societies we tend to befriend people who cooperate similar amounts to us, have similar genes to us (even among non-relations) and are physically and socially similar.

'Lean on Me, When You're Not Strong': The Evolution of Human Cooperation

There is strong evidence from chimps on the antecedents of friendships- for chimps non-reproductive connections provide a form of direct reciprocity- support in a fight, borrowing valuable tools, food in time of scarcity (this has been particularly documented by Pruetz and Lindshield). While these aren't exactly friendships as we'd categorise them- they are based too much in reciprocal giving and taking- they do provide clues on why friendships make evolutionary sense.

Further, it has been documented in primates that those who have a better ability to form coalitions have an evolutionary advantage over their competitors- which has been posed as a possible explanation- the logic being that many of the same characteristics (a giving nature etc.) are the same as we prize in friends and potential members of an alliance.

Baboons who form strong non-reproductive bonds also have better immune function and energy savings, which have been explained as being relieved of the burden of being continuously vigilant of potential challenges and attacks and the potential reduced sense of vulnerability.

As Bowles and Gintis (who on a side note wrote papers for MLK Jr.'s Poor People's March back in the day) document in The Cooperative Species, the relatively warlike nature of the hunter-gatherer existence and the rapid extinction of many groups precipitated the genetic and cultural evolution of social emotions such as shame and guilt because they conferred an advantage on any member of a relatively cooperative group. It is theorised that these emotions provided the jump from so called 'contingent cooperation' (think: if you buy coffee for your co-workers, then you expect them to buy you coffee back at a relatively fixed point in the future) and true friendship.

But can we thus shed any light on who we become friends with?

'Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend': Who are we more likely to be friends with?

Friendship is obviously a culturally contingent phenomenon- witness the breakdown in affectionate male friendships in particularly Anglo-American society that occurred after the Oscar Wilde trial (and from which the Anglo-American world has never really recovered- men used to walk arm in arm in Hyde Park- would many straight men ever do that again?). However, studies have shown amongst groups as diverse as Americans and the Hadza people of north-central Tanzania that there a few common threads amongst those who we choose to be friends with. Broadly speaking, interpersonal similarity is the strongest predictor: we are rarely friends with those who are completely dissimilar to us (except in the case that through repeated interaction we grow to like them).

Much like Erving Goffman's 'matching hypothesis' for couples, there is evidence that people often pick people of similar 'worth' as defined by different cultural characteristics e.g. looks, intelligence, interests etc. Apicella et al found that the strongest predictors of what they call 'social assortativity' (a measure of the regularity of interactions based on the idea that we tend to interact more with our friends) is highest amongst those who cooperate in similar amounts (this is unsurprising- we like friends who are friendly!). A similar result has also been found for US students and Honduran adult villagers- meaning it is likely to be robust to cultural variation. Physical similarities are also prized amongst the Hadza -- after all foraging is labour intensive and if you've got friends who can physically help more, they are going to be contributing more to your life or group. This may also explain why it has been observed that even in modern society we tend to group with people of reasonably similar physical attractiveness to us- although this is obviously also socially attuned- more attractive people are also more popular. Similar positions in a social group are also a strong predictor of friendship- they both bring people together more often and increase the desire for continued social interaction. 

There is also interesting new evidence that people may befriend those with similar genotypes- in particular a study by James Fowler found that whether a person carries DRD2 (which has been linked to alcoholism) and CYP2A6 (which has been linked to openness) is strongly linked to whether they befriend another person with or without those genes, even accounting for social proximity. This of course is particularly bad news for alcoholics, it turns out that not only are they more likely to be genetically predisposed to drink to excess, they may be genetically predisposed to be friends with others who are also predisposed as such. But it provides an interesting broader point- is friendship also for the benefit of the genes? If we follow a Dawkins logic, some of the purpose of friendship may actually be to benefit our genes. It should also be noted that the Fowler study found that 4 other genes were not linked to friendship- so this question needs further exploration. 

Some Further Questions

Obviously this is an area where many new discoveries are being made- studies of the evolution of cooperation more broadly are on the frontier of science after having been largely ignored by evolutionary biology for so long. But there is interesting evidence that far from just being social constructs, friendships were evolutionary advantageous to humans as a form of reciprocity, social association and possibly even genetic association. None of this of course is to downplay how important and varied friendships really are- it just asks an interesting question: how was I able to feel this way towards others in the first place?

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Dan Gibbons is a third year Bachelor of Commerce (Economics) student at the University of Melbourne. He has a forthcoming publication in Intergraph: A Journal of Dialogic Anthropology (about memory and nationalism) and is currently submitting papers on the rise of modern consumerism, the role of criminology theory in literary criticism and the institutional theory of nationalism. Dan is a keen debater and public speaker.